


Trap and Release

by SegaBarrett



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: AU Post-Canon, Gen, implied character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 22:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12542244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Two survivors, at the end of it all.





	Trap and Release

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Bates Motel, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Written for the "Bates final fic" challenge during S5.

“Excuse me… Sir… Excuse me. Where are all of the kittens?”

The muscular blonde turns around and lets his shoulders slump with a long sigh.

“We don’t have any right now.”

“…But I want one.”

 _And I want a million dollars, but we’re both going to be disappointed,_ Caleb thinks as he tries to avoid another sigh. Eventually, the couple – a woman with a brand name purse and a stocky man with a pocket protector – saunters away in search of kittens elsewhere.

Caleb takes the opportunity to walk down the hallway, and lets himself into the last door on the left.

He has the choice of another two doors, and he chooses one, letting himself in and moving to sit on a wooden rocking chair.

He takes his phone and taps his finger against “Photos”, then swipes past a few of Dylan and Emma.

He sighs again and backs out of it. It was a bad idea, though he doesn’t have long to think about it before a big black cat hops into his lap.

Caleb smiles and begins a long stroke, beginning at the top of the cat’s head and moving down to the base of its spine.

He takes a deep breath, finding the smell of litter and cat hair oddly comforting, It’s nice to have a living thing he doesn’t have to try and explain it all too. They’re rather good listeners.

“It’s that kind of day,” he murmurs, “How have you been doing?”

The cat purrs in response, rubbing up against Caleb’s hand.

Caleb swallows, and suddenly his eyes are stinging, His days seem to be tear-filled more often than not recently, and he hates it. There’s something ironic about being built like an MMA fighter but tumbling into the kind of hysterics he would picture from a teenage girl in a horror film. It’s hard to tell what’s going to set him off next, though refrigerators are generally a sure thing.

At least the cats aren’t likely to laugh at him about it. 

He buries his head in the black cat’s fur and breathes deep.

***

He swipes into the Metro and takes the train four stops. When he exits, he walks upstream against a torrent of young people, backpacks swinging as they chatter with one another and snap selfies in mid-walk.

When he gets to the top of the escalator, he finds a single figure, bathed in light against a street sign, arms crossed as if she’s been waiting for him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he manages, running a hand back through his hair. When is he ever not late?

“It’s fine. Let’s get out of here.”

The figure is short and slim – short compared to him, at least, maybe tall for the average thirteen-year-old – and dressed in a black blouse and blue skirt, a tie haphazardly wrapped around her neck. 

As if they have never left, they make their way back down the escalator and swipe back into the Metro. As they ride, they talk. 

They abide by what Caleb calls, to himself, The Agreement.

They talk about school – about work – about the weather – about the guy from out of town who got cursed out for drinking coffee on the Metro. About the teacher she can’t stand and about the person who got fired from Caleb’s work for showing up drunk and tripping over a Rottweiler.

They do not talk about Dylan or Emma, or Norman or Norma.

They do not talk about why this is their sixth apartment in two years. 

Their new location is a nice cover for the fact that Caleb cannot drive without losing sight of the road in what seems to be his head exploding over and over. It hadn’t worked out nearly so well in Atchison, Kansas.

“Seriously, though. If a real eleven year old was suddenly, like, thirty, she’d be like, why do I have huge legs, and what is up with my face, not ‘let me become a sexy jewel thief’. Do they even know anyone who’s eleven?” 

Caleb agrees wholeheartedly.

They step off the train and begin walking to the apartment. When they step inside, he thinks again that it’s a nice place. The “living room” is marked by a TV, a couch, and a mattress on the floor, while the single bedroom has a canopy bed, another TV, and a tiny dresser that props up a large make-up case.

Katie had laughed when he had gotten her that.

“You know I don’t wear make-up.”

She uses it for movie tickets, guitar picks, and the occasional interesting rock. It’s one thing that has traveled with them every-which-where in the past few years, from Costa Rica to Mexico to Kansas to Maryland.

“Get your homework done,” he tells her now, as he locks the door, and she rolls her eyes but walks to her room to comply – or snapchat, or something, as far as he really knows.

He turns on the TV and begins to scan through the available channels, eventually arriving at the news.

Whoever lives next door has Celtic music running full blast; it’s kind of welcome. He can’t stand the quiet. Not for a long time, now. The quiet and the cold. 

“Norman Bates, tried for several murders in 2017 and found not guilty by reason of insanity, was realized today from…”

Caleb turns it off as quickly as he can.

His pulse quickens.

This isn’t what Dylan would want for his daughter. None of it. And pulling her out of another school would open up more questions, would wrench her away from everything she’s come to know.

_If Norman comes looking for us…_

He runs a finger along the long scar on the back of his head, and decides – _If Norman comes looking for us, he’s getting a fight to the death this time._


End file.
